Managing and monitoring connected components is important for local and wide area network applications and other interconnected environments. Several operation and maintenance (OAM) systems and related protocols are known which are designed to enable network management of network-attached components. Some of these systems and protocols include a collection of attributes and procedures for accessing the attributes associated with a network-attached component.
One example of an OAM protocol is simple network management protocol (SNMP). Under SNMP, a network device has an attribute management system which includes a database for storing attribute information relating to the network device, referred to as a management information base (MIB). The network device can also contain agent software for querying and modifying the attribute information, referred to as an agent. A network being managed under SNMP also includes a management station running management software which provides centralized control of the various network components by communicating with the agent software over the network. The management software typically runs on a network-attached computer and an interface is provided in the form of a graphical user interface (GUI). The management software obtains information about various network-attached components in the MIBs and allows a user to monitor, query or modify the information in the MIBs. To monitor, query or modify information, the management software sends a request over the network to the attribute management system. Agent software for examining or otherwise performing operations on the attribute examines the request, and if valid, carries out the request and sends a message back to the management software.
Typical networks include network-attached components in distributed architectures that are manufactured by a variety of different vendors. These different network-attached components typically require customization in order to integrate these components with current OAM systems and protocols, such as SNMP. Due to the difficulty with integrating different vendor-specific aspects, current OAM systems and related protocols have been limited to managing only the attributes of network-attached components that are common to all or a large portion of vendors. Therefore, there exists a need for improved OAM systems and protocols for integrating the vendor-specific aspects of different network-attached components.
Other OAM systems, such as CORBA® (acronym for Common Object Request Broker Architecture) (developed by Object Management Group, Inc. of Needham, Me., U.S.A.), can be overly complex except for advanced programmers. The complexity of such systems can result in an OAM operator having difficulty interpreting displayed information. In addition, existing OAM systems can require excessive implementation overhead. Therefore, there exists a need to provide OAM systems and protocols having reduced complexity for improving operator interface.
Accordingly, there exists a need for improved systems, methods, and computer program products for operating OAM-based networks.